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Earth Power

Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas As Bridge To Renewables 245

"In a speech today that is likely making some EV proponents' heads spin and implode, Musk made the argument that we need more oil and gas as we transition to alternative energy solutions," writes Slashdot reader theshowmecanuck. "He said this at the ONS Energy Conference being held in Norway this week." Bloomberg reports: The world needs more oil and gas now to deal with an energy shortage while pushing to transition to renewable supplies, Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said. "At this time, we actually need more oil and gas, not less," Musk said Monday during an energy conference in Norway, adding that he's not someone to "demonize" the fossil fuels. At the same time, "we must have a clear path to a sustainable energy future."

Musk said the transition to a sustainable economy should be "as fast as possible," adding that ocean wind has "massive untapped potential" and that he's also a proponent of nuclear energy. "If you have a well-designed nuclear plant, you should not shut it down -- especially right now," Musk said. The EV maker's aim "has always been to accelerate sustainability," Musk said. "That's still our primary goal by far."
"Realistically, I think we need to use oil and gas in the short term, because otherwise civilization will crumble," Musk added. "One of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced is the transition to sustainable energy and to a sustainable economy. That will take some decades to complete."

Further reading: Germany To Keep Last Three Nuclear-Power Plants Running In Policy U-Turn
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Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas As Bridge To Renewables

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  • by atomicalgebra ( 4566883 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @06:26PM (#62834531)

    The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now.

    For the record the fastest deep decarbonization in world history involved nuclear(thanks France and Sweden). Germany failed to decarbonize after spending 500 billion euros on renewables.

    • by bettodavis ( 1782302 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @06:52PM (#62834599)
      The funny part is that those anti-nuclear hippies back in the 60s and 70s, contrarily to their sincere expectations and beliefs, really screwed us all over.

      Had they invested in nuclear energy with the same gusto of renewables, the drastic call for decarbonization would have probably never been needed.

      Now we still have to do it, and with a helluva lot of CO2 already released to the atmosphere.
      • by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @07:54PM (#62834779) Homepage

        Had they invested in nuclear energy with the same gusto of renewables,

        Except that isn't how it happened. The anti nuclear hippies where just anti nuclear. They didn't give two shits about renewables. All they cared about was making sure we where fucked on nuclear. They where perfectly happy for us to keep using fossil fuels.

      • The problem is that it's the same old shitty designs who's main purpose is to create weapons grade plutonium and then power generation as a byproduct.
        • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @09:09PM (#62834929)

          The problem is that it's the same old shitty designs who's main purpose is to create weapons grade plutonium and then power generation as a byproduct.

          Really? Do you know how weapons grade plutonium is made? It takes exposing U-238 to a neutron flux for a short period of time, "short" as in weeks instead of the months or years that nuclear power plants typically cycle out the fuel. This is so the U-238 grabs a neutron to become U-239 which decays into Pu-239. The time has to be kept short because if left in too long then a lot of the Pu-239 becomes Pu-240, and Pu-240 is bad for bombs.

          I thought there was a video about this from Illinois Energy Prof but I can't find it. I did find a couple interesting videos on nuclear power though. Here's links:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

          In the Soviet Union they built "dual use" reactors, reactors that could be used to make weapons grade material. They did this by not having a containment dome in the way of swapping out fuel rods. Outside of the Soviet Union the containment dome not only protects people from radiation in normal operation, and the spread of radioactive material if something goes wrong, but is critical to keeping the reactor, well, critical. The vessel is pressurized to keep the moderating water from boiling away, and the moderating effect of water is mentioned in the videos I linked to above. If the water boils away the reaction stops. The Soviets got around this issue of the water boiling away with a more expansive core design, and the details on how this works gets complicated quickly. But because they saved so much money on not building a dome the reactor was much cheaper in the end than what would be found outside the Soviet Union. It was dangerous as hell, but cheaper and able to be used to make weapons grade materials.

          While it is certainly possible to create weapons grade material in civil nuclear power plants it would not be very efficient, and would prevent the plant from producing any electricity. The RBMK reactor that the Soviets built could potentially be used to produce power and weapons grade material at the same time. To make that work they had to dispense with safety features that nobody but the Soviets would have gone without.

          Use of thorium as fuel would have made it nearly impossible to produce weapon grade material in a civil nuclear power plant. This didn't happen because Nixon wanted nuclear power in his home state of California, a place where uranium was well established as the preferred fuel. Experiments on thorium reactors was happening in places that was not California, so they were starved of funding.

          If the main purpose of nuclear power plants was to produce weapon grade plutonium then our nuclear power plants would look a lot like those built in the Soviet Union, not how they look now. The reason why we still use uranium instead of the cheaper and more abundant thorium is because Nixon was from California rather than Tennessee.

          • by _merlin ( 160982 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @02:21AM (#62835365) Homepage Journal

            You can make weapons-grade plutonium in a lot of reactors, but it's easiest in reactors that allow on-line refueling (i.e. you can swap fuel rods in and out while the reactor is generating power). This includes the Soviet RBMK, the UK AGR, and the Canadian CANDU (which India successfully used to breed plutonium for their first nuclear bombs). However, other designs have been used to generate power as well as breed plutonium for weapons, including the early MAGNOX reactors in the UK and France. They just ran them at low burnup rates and extracted the plutonium and remaining uranium by way of PUREX reprocessing.

            Reactor designs that don't allow online refueling are favoured because they present less of a proliferation risk. If you need to shut down the reactor to refuel it, you don't want to change the fuel too often, so you'll want to run at high burnup rates where most of the Pu239 bred in the reactor is spent before the fuel is removed. The various BWR, PWR and VVER designes are like this. But there's no technical limitation that would prevent you from building a BWR or PWR that supports on-line refueling - you'd just need to incorporate the fueling machine into the upper part of the pressure vessel the way the AGR and RBMK do. Of course you'd want to put the fueling machine inside the secondary containment (as is the case for AGR and CANDU designs) rather than skipping the secondary containment like RBMK did.

            The RBMK's issues were from a combination of factors. They were water-cooled and graphite-moderated (this was a design choice to allow them to run on unenriched uranium). Besides cooling, water has two major effects in a reactor: it acts as a moderator (converting fast neutrons to slow neutrons, allowing them to cause additional fission reactions), and it absorbs some proportion of the neutrons. The former increases the fission rate, while the latter reduces it. Now in a BWR, PWR or VVER, the water is acting as the moderator as well as the coolant. If the coolant boils inside the core forming a steam void, the moderation and neutron absorption will be reduced. The reduction in neutron moderation will outweigh the reduction neutron absorption, and the fission will slow, causing the reactor to cool. This negative feedback effect is called a negative void coefficient. Compare this to an RBMK: if water boils in the core forming a steam void, there will be a reduction in neutron absoption, but no significant reduction in moderation as moderation is primarily provided by graphite. This will cause the rate of fission to accelerate, causing the core to heat up, and boil more of the coolant. Steam is also less effective at removing heat, so the rate at which the core heats up, further accelerating the rate of steam void formation. This positive feedback effect is called a positive void coefficient. It's absolutely critical that coolant isn't allowed to boil in the core of an RBMK, or it will result in a runaway reaction leading to a steam explosion.

            The US has a ban on using reactors with positive void coefficients for power generation for safety reasons. This means an RBMK would never have been allowed to be built in the US, but it also bans CANDU reactors. CANDU reactors have a small positive void coefficient, although nowhere near as severe as an RBMK. Once again, it comes back to design decisions stemming from a desire to allow use of unenriched uranium as fuel. CANDU reactors use light water for cooling in the fuel channels, surrounded by a larger vessel (the calandria) filled with heavy water for moderation. If the water in the cooling channels boils forming a steam void, the rate of fission will increase. However, the volume of cooling water is relatively small, so it doesn't provide much neutron absorption under normal circumstances anyway, and the calandria can be drained of heavy water very quickly to stop neutron moderation (unlike graphite blocks in a reactor core that you can't practically remove). In practice, the CANDU's positive void coefficient isn't a

          • Also the RMBK was designed to run from the absolute minimal enrichment that could manage, for extra cheapness.

            The containment dome goes outside the reactor components and captures explosions: it shouldn't have anything to do with the criticality of the reactor. The inner pressure vessel does that.

            RBMK uses graphite rather than water to moderate, like the ACGR reactors in the UK. Those use a gas coolant, so no problem with it boiling off and altering the moderation properties.

      • by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @10:33PM (#62835067) Journal
        It was not the hippies.

        It was a false flag operation by Big Oil. It is not totally astro turf. There were enough goofy ones to choose from. The Big Oil promoted the most ardent goofy anti nuclear hippies and drowned out the sensible ones.

    • We need nuclear power or fast breeder reactors? (a.k.a costly, tax payer subsidized weapons grade uranium enrichment factories?
      • Fast breeder reactors do not have to be built to enrich. In fact they can be built to destroy nuclear material. There are two ways to get rid of nuclear weapon materials. The first is to explode it(let's not do that) or burn it in a fast reactor like an IFR or molten salt reactor.

        Weapons != energy

    • Of avoiding honestly addressing the issues by having a goal that's impossible to reach. At first I thought the preoccupation with nuclear power on this forum was just nostalgia but people hang on to it against all reason. New nuclear power plants are far too expensive even accounting for smrs which aren't available anyway. And then there's the risks. Even the smrs while they have safety measures aren't immune to manufacturing defects that can result in your city becoming a super fund site. American busines
      • Meanwhile wind and solar have both been shown to be capable of providing base load power.

        I'm only going to address two points. First this point because it is not true. It is a fucking lie. No where on Earth has wind and solar provided baseload power. No where. Especially Seattle(which uses Hydro and Nuclear for baseload and has very little solar). Get your facts straight before you spout nonsense.

        So why do so many people want nuclear?

        Because nuclear is the only viable way to replace coal and gas. Due to solar and wind intermittency they can never replace coal or gas. In fact supporting renewables only is tantamount to foss

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Even if you think the technology is good, why would you want something so expensive? Wind and solar are far, far cheaper, and can be built in a couple of years or less. With nuclear it takes decades and the end result is extremely expensive power that you are forced to pay for because of the subsidies.

        I want cheap, plentiful electricity. Nuclear can't deliver that, and even if it could by the time it's ready it will be too late to avoid the worst of climate change.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

        The nuclear fanboys promote nuclear without having to be paid for two big reasons. One, they think it's neato, they are dazzled by the technology, newer must be better right? Two, the nuclear industry tells them they don't have to change their habits, and they believe anything they want to believe. It's a lot easier to sell fuckery than austerity. This is the true driving factor.

    • For the record the fastest deep decarbonization in world history involved nuclear(thanks France and Sweden). Germany failed to decarbonize after spending 500 billion euros on renewables.

      At the moment France is importing power from Germany [apnews.com] because half of French nuclear reactors are shut down due to maintenance and technical issues.
      Nuclear is expensive, maintenance intensive, and it runs into problems during drought and heat waves because there is not enough cool water to cool the reactors.

  • Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas ...

    Guessing this means Tesla will be building vehicles with ICEs ?

    • Re:So ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @06:35PM (#62834557)
      No, I think his argument is perfectly illustrated by the previous story on the /. front page about the UK postponing the closure of a coal plant due to a shortage of its near-term replacement - natural gas (Thanks, Russia!)

      It would be great if their plan had been to leapfrog straight from coal to solar or wind, because then Russia wouldn't have a say.

      Why the UK couldn't or didn't make that jump I'm not totally clear on, although it's much harder there than it is in Texas or California with abundant sun and wind and undeveloped land.

      • Well because CCGT has been the cleanest and most commercially viable means of energy production for the past decade. And market forces have some influence on things.
        • Well, it's too bad markets nor governments foresaw the current reality, because now they're paying obscene rates for imported fossil fuel and it's going right up the chimney with nothing to show for it.
      • 43% of the UK's electricity is from renewables ... and growing

    • Guessing this means Tesla will be building vehicles with ICEs ?

      He couldn't figure out any other way to get towing range out of cybertruck.

    • Behold, the V8 powered Tesla. https://youtu.be/x-6kHjF1U1E [youtu.be]

    • Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas ...

      Guessing this means Tesla will be building vehicles with ICEs ?

      No, it just is a necessary thing for him to say after having moving so far to the hard-right. It means he wants to get more political.

      Keep your eye out for him to start a new PAC or something.

      • The statement is true, and here you are complaining about the politics of it.

        That means that politically you would prefer lies.

        • The statement is simply literally utterly false. We can spend our effort in lots of different ways. The world needs more energy output, but it's cheaper to get it with renewables, so the idea that we need more fossil fuels is idiotic. It takes great expense to create more fossil fuel production, and what you wind up with is a polluting source of energy that contributes to the destruction of our life support system. Anyone promoting more of it is a dumbfuck at best, or more likely is willing to watch the wor

    • by tsa ( 15680 )

      Musk says a lot of things. Better listen to experts.

    • Re:So ... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @10:09PM (#62835027)

      Elon Musk Says World Needs More Oil and Gas ...

      Guessing this means Tesla will be building vehicles with ICEs ?

      No, it means that Musk is building a bunch of stuff in Texas and wants to suck up to the dumb local politicians. They're dumb, so it will work.

  • We don't need more, we just need to pump more from places that don't start with 'R' in the name for now and the can stop burning it off.

  • That is obvious (Score:4, Insightful)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @06:34PM (#62834555)

    We should get to 100% revenwable, but without being fools about it. Let's be real, without an economy you don't have shit. If you cut off energy supply, the economy is doomed. Hell, we'd be doomed politically too because psychos will win the election because a stressed public won't think straight in who they are electing. We can't switch to solar overnight. First off we can't even build solar because you can't build a factory nowadays without all kinds of bogus environmental reviews and buy-ins. The quickest way to build a solar panel factory is with gasoline powered heavy machinery, and to run it you may need fossil fuel power. That's the environment we want to suddenly put the brakes on oil and gas? Don't be a fool. If the economy is doomed, the nation is doomed. Susceptible to invasion and colonization, it's the truth. Probably even deservedly. If there's anything nature and history has taught us, there's always something that wants to take what you have and if they can't enslave you, then wipe you out. It's a law of nature.

  • .. and you don't expect Germans to be that gullible, but they were lead by men like former chancellor Gerhard Fritz Kurt "Gerd" SchrÃder who is very much a Putin's man just as DT is a Putin's man in the US. The problem is Germans and EU couldn't really think 5 moves ahead and Putin with his Ph.D. thesis on the economics of commodities on the economy of Russia could and he said it with a threat of using nukes if he couldn't get his way.
    • .. and you don't expect Germans to be that gullible

      Before 1939 that might have been true. Since then we know that they are as easily led as anyone else, maybe more. Maybe pay a little more attention to world events there, sport.

  • by SmaryJerry ( 2759091 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @06:53PM (#62834603)
    Trying to transition to renewables right now by cutting oil and gas is like canceling your garbage service now because you know in 10 years you will be able to recycle everything - you create 10 years of messes in the mean time. It would be a major disaster, and already the hurt is beginning thanks to the equivalent of “cold turkey” type of policies which have reduced investment in oil and gas to practically nothing - making the cost of gas more than double even prior to the war with Ukraine..
    • by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Monday August 29, 2022 @07:24PM (#62834679) Journal

      Justin Trudeau cancelled a major gas pipeline to the east coast of Canada not quite 5 years ago that could have been near competion, including LNG facilities. One of the benefits people said, would be to allow Europe to not be so tied to Russia. But Trudeau is a virtue signalling identity politics kind of guy and he said he didn't care. As long as he makes Canada a virtue signalling environmental beacon nothing else matters. He doesn't understand that Canada only produces a couple of percent of the world's greenhouse gases, and the rest of the world still needs fossil fuel until we can all get off it. And it is better to get it from a politically clean source than from dictatorships and theocratic autocracies like Russia and Saudi Arabia. But then again, he's a failed arts student who never really held a full time job for any length of time. And the only reason he became Prime Minister is his father's name (former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau), a headlong race to the left by the Liberal Party trying to out-socialist the socialist New Democratic Party, and a Conservative Party of Canada that makes Trump and the Tea Party look like flower power hippies. There is no party that is centrist, so he is the best of the worst. Hardly anything to praise, especially when his dogma doesn't shift when world affairs shift.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Aighearach ( 97333 )

        If they'd plan pipelines routes to respect all the shareholders, they'd be able to get more of them built. But they're not willing to do that; all the plans are greedy and contain absurd tradeoffs that are outside the prerogatives of the designers. So they often get blocked or cancelled. They're just so used to being evil, they can't comprehend that this might be costing them money, since it results in so many expensive failures.

      • virtue signalling environmental beacon

        Canada only produces a couple of percent of the world's greenhouse gases

        Can you please stop using the word virtue signalling [sic] if you don't know what it means. Hint: When you actively do something or achieve something, or prevent someone else from doing something it's no longer "virtue signaling" as much as it is "action".

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          virtue signalling environmental beacon

          Canada only produces a couple of percent of the world's greenhouse gases

          Can you please stop using the word virtue signalling [sic] if you don't know what it means. Hint: When you actively do something or achieve something, or prevent someone else from doing something it's no longer "virtue signaling" as much as it is "action".

          You see, at this point, the term "virtue signalling" doesn't actually mean anything beyond "he said something I didn't like".

          You're right that by the technical definition of the term he is misusing it, but this is what happens when a term is repeatedly misused (and overused), it loses it's meaning.

          The thing about English that people who like to use faux-insults like "virtue signalling" or "SJW" continually fail to get is that context is everything in the English language. Even if you don't use a parti

  • I totally agree with the liberal demand that all cars be wind-powered by sails. Harrrrr, that be good.
  • Why do we care about Elon's opinion....about anything ?
    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      Why do we care about Elon's opinion....about anything ?

      I agree; I'd really like to hear less of his opinions.

      He does have some pretty cool companies. But that doesn't make him an oracle.

    • Because he is the world's leading spacefaring nation.

  • Elon Musk is a supporter of nuclear power but this appears to get overlooked whenever his name comes up. Musk knows that his dream of retiring on Mars will not happen without nuclear power. He's a smart guy and has done the math. I suspect that as an owner of a company that makes solar panels that he can't say too much in favor of nuclear power, that's just bad business. I have to wonder if he's regretting his investment in solar power right now.

    Musk is not the typical kind of environmentalist. He beli

    • So the low social responsibility score doesn't have anything to do with Tesla Motors' factories having among the worst health & safety records in America?

      Also, by his own admission, we cannot accept anything Musk says at face value. He often has some scheme or ulterior motive or personal prejudice informing his public pronouncements. He's one of those, "I was only joking!" when you know he really meant it kind of people.
  • Could someone check to see if these Texas Oil Billionaires kid napped the real Musk and replaced him with a body double ... Thanks.
  • There's a huge investment lead-time in energy infrastructure and no reason whatsoever to not put that investment into the kind of system the world already acknowledges is necessary. Putting a single additional cent into things we know are bad makes no sense. I honestly don't know what he's thinking when he says something like this, unless it's just pandering to regional prejudices since moving to Texas.
    • Mmm... you could be onto something there. Although it may just be more a case of he regurgitates whatever the money people around him say, i.e. living in California = "Electric cars & renewables are the way to go!", moves to Texas = "We need more oil & gas!"

      It really could be that simple. I've studied psycho- & socio-linguistics at masters level, this is a well-studied & understood phenomenon.
  • If we had a more spread out, and more robust, supply of oil and gas then it would be less justifiable to blow up countries so as to steal theirs. Ultimately, having nuclear, solar, and so on, will really help curb the aspirations of the MIC, in all nations, and make it easier for the populace of those nations to order them to stand down.

    But until then, there are still several nations who are defying America and its allies by sitting on top of "their" oil and gas.

  • The Norwegian audience probably loved it. Norway is the 4th biggest exporter of natural gas, and the 9th biggest oil exporter. Their policy is "make money now by turning the Anthropocene extinction event into a mass extinction event later".
  • Sure. (Score:4, Funny)

    by denny_deluxe ( 1693548 ) on Tuesday August 30, 2022 @09:02AM (#62836109)
    From the guy who offered forty-four billion dollars to buy Twitter. How could he be wrong about anything?

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